New Couch!

New Couch
Originally uploaded by kjourdan

Our new couch arrived! We've been working hard to get everything in the living room organized now that the furniture has all changed, but it will be a few more weeks before our new tv cabinet arrives. It's looking better, though!

(There are more pictures on Flickr..if you click on the photo above, it should take you to my flickr photos)

Tree trimming

The beautiful flowering tree in our backyard needed some trimming, as it was growing closer and closer to the house. However, it's also quite tall and even with the extendo-trimmer, we couldn't reach the top. So here's a picture of Justin trimming the top of the tree using the extendo-trimmer out the second floor bathroom window:

Aren't we creative?

We rode our bikes to Tangerini's for ice cream this afternoon in the beautiful sunshine. That totally evens out, right, riding your bike to go and get ice cream?

Spring in Full Force

The flowers are blooming....

and the lawn needs mowing....

Spring is really here!

Last of the yellow walls

The last of the yellow walls are gone! We painted the guest room a nice, fresh shade of green. We even painted the ceiling (hence the picture of me with a crick in my neck). The pictures of the new color don't do it justice, but you can see some of the improvement.

Outdoor photos

I mentioned yesterday that we've done some work outside. Here are some photos:
The new deck benches were made completely out of materials we had left over from building the deck last year (well, except for the cushions, but that's it, really!):




We also expanded (by about 4x) the size of our planting bed in the back:
(The first is a far-off shot, the second and third are two close-ups)

Outside Adventures

We've been doing a lot of work outside at our house, and I'm pleased to announce (on J's behalf) that we have our best lawn ever! Now, I'm not talking 100% grass or anything (let's not be silly, people), but we're definitely at about 85% grass, 15% random junk that floats in and decides to grow. Compared to 40% grass when we moved in two years ago (and I am being generous with that 40%), it's a TREMENDOUS IMPROVEMENT! I can actually walk barefoot without it hurting! To add to that, we were recently gifted a Toro lawn mower very similar to my dad's. It is 20 years old, but in working condition. It was sitting in our neighbor's father's shed and he no longer uses it, so now it's ours.

Besides that, we expanded our back planting bed and built two benches for our deck. More details (and photos) on those two things later. Until tomorrow (when I can photograph said things), here are a couple of photos of the things we've got blooming around our house right now:

Hooray for AC (oh, and heat too)

I was reprimanded for not posting the update on the AC/duct work front....the AC and new furnace are installed along with some new duct work (free of charge)! It was finished on Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday was hot and sticky and we tested it out. It was awesome. :) Now it's been nice and cool since then (I'm not complaining, just stating it) so we haven't used it again.

I won't go so far as to post a picture....that would be going to far, right?

Compost Bin

We've been composting for the past year or so, but we didn't have a proper receptacle for the composting. And now that we have wonderful stuff from last year that we can use in our gardens this year, we needed two compartments for new compost and ready-to-use compost. So, after the AC guy left at 8:00 a.m. yesterday, we got to work. It's amazing what you can accomplish by noon when you get started at 8:00!

We also cleared out another bit of space (on the left) for additional vegetables in our garden:

Did we mention that the rest of the tree got taken down? A man we refer to as "the crazy guy with the chainsaw scar on his cheek" climbed up that thing and then proceeded to take it down BY HIMSELF.
We helped our neighbors construct the replacement swingset this afternoon...the boys were very happy swinging away tonight.

AC Tease

Our appointment to have the new furnace and central air installed was for this morning. Yesterday morning the installer called and said that the units hadn't arrived yet and we'd have to cancel. I told him to call if they arrived, because we wouldn't be making any other plans. So lo and behold, around 6:00 last night he called to say it had arrived, and to expect them between 7:00-8:00 this morning. That meant that we got our sorry selves out of bed BEFORE 7:00 A.M. on a SATURDAY. They arrived at 7:30, but had bad news once they looked around...our current duct system is too small for the 2 ton unit. However, the Sears guy who sold us the system should have known that, so we're hoping that Sears will pay for it (the installer hinted that they should, and have paid for others in the past). KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED!

If half a tree falls...

If only the top half of a tree falls in a back yard, does it still do damage? Well, of course it does! And we were even here to see and hear it.
Never a dull moment around here, that's for sure.

Thankfully, the tree did not hit the house...the deck (on the other people's half), though, and the swing set (the tree fell onto the other people's "half," but it's technically joint property). The falling tree gods were on our side, though, because the mom and 5-year-old who were out in the back yard were not hurt, and it fell four hours before the birthday party for their 11-year-old took place in that same backyard. So if it was going down, it went down in the best way it could.


Can you believe that's only part of the tree? You can see here that it was just one portion of the top half of the tree that broke off. We're thinking from looking at it that it had been traumatized at some point (maybe lightning?) and that weakened it.

It's windy again today and I find myself looking at the remaining trees with a wary eye.

New house color!

Look! Our house is a new color! (See earlier post for a reminder of how ugly it used to be) This is not its best angle, but it keeps drizzling at the time of day when it's best to photograph.
Here's a photo of the back with our new (matching) umbrella, courtesy of my parents. Oh, and notice the deck, of course.

It looks SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better!

New Front Door!

We're very excited because we're getting our house painted over April vacation. We had thought we'd do it ourselves, but we got a really reasonable bid (and we only pay half because it's a duplex) so we're hiring someone. That will be an interesting experience...to have someone else doing work on our house, that is.

Just in case people haven't seen just how ugly the color of our house currently is, here's a photo: (no offense to anyone else with this house color, but on a place as devoid of architectural detail as ours, it looks atrocious)

Because we're getting the house painted, it made sense for us to replace our front door before the painters arrived. We'd already been planning to replace it, because once we replaced the windows last summer, it became very clear that the door was leaking some major cold air into the house. When we took the door out, this is the insulation we found:

That's right...it's about 1/2 inch thick, and 1 inch deep. What a surprise that it was leaking air (insert sarcastic tone).

I was laughing when I read on a webpage that you need to be ready when you take the door out, because it's very disconcerting to have a hole in your house that you can't close. Here is our hole:That hole is gone, of course, and is filled by this lovely door:It won't stay white for long!

New Armchair

This weekend we bought, of all things, an ARMCHAIR!!


















Isn't it pretty? We were at Filene's in Natick because they're closing that store (it was in the same mall as a Macy's and Macy's bought them out), thinking we would buy a knife set, or maybe an espresso machine. We struck out on both of those two things, but they had just marked the furniture down to 60% off, so we walked through. I thought we had struck out until we saw this one. We both went "Ahhh" when we sat in it. It's up in our bedroom right now until we get our new couch this summer (we hope!). It swivels! Now we just need a reading lamp to go with it!

P.S. the photo on the wall is from our honeymoon in St. John. :)

Finally, a nicer day...or at least this morning was.

We got some pictures of the finished deck, so here they are, finally. :)

From the driveway:

Here's from inside the kitchen:

J was happy to see that the deck is still sitting level:

We got outside this morning to try and clean up some of the thousands of pine needles that have fallen in all of the recent storms. Here's a picture of needles that were on the driveway:

We know you thought we were joking about all the rain we've gotten, but these extra garbage cans were open during all of the rain and you'll notice that they're full to overflowing:


I just looked out the window and IT'S SNOWING!!! Not hard, but still, there is snow coming down. That is not right, especially since they're forecasting 60 degrees for tomorrow.
I just finished an adorable fall knitting project..I'll post pictures tomorrow.

The Final Screw

No, that's not a dirty title. Take a look at this:


That's right....that's the final screw of the deck! Notice that J is smiling, knowing that it's all coming to an end.













Of course, all did not go smoothly, because come on, would a day of working on the deck be complete without a little adversity?
See this picture?















That's the second to last screw, which stripped 1/4 of an inch from the rail and was a real bugger to remove. Notice the less-than-thrilled look on J's face. We knew that things had been going too smoothly....but, we conquered it and then we celebrated:







We even put the camera on the nice wide railing to take this timer picture!




We'll post a beautiful, finished deck photo once the inspector comes and we can put the table, grill, etc. on there for the full effect.

Rock Star J

J worked like a rock star today and we actually have steps! Now we just need hand railings to go with those steps and we can call the building inspector and have the deck approved! The end is in sight, thank goodness!

It just figures....

...that as soon as we started mixing the concrete for the pad at the bottom of the stairs, a thunderstorm started rolling in. We managed to get it all mixed and covered without disastrous results, but come on, when do the breaks start? Needless to say, we were drenched by the time this part of the project was done. We tried to etch our initials in the concrete after it set up a bit, but it's harder to do that than they make it look in the movies. Or maybe we just bought cheap concrete.

(Obviously you can't see the concrete under the tarp..you'll just have to believe us that it's there. This oh so lovely picture of me is the most recent shot of the deck WITH THE RAILINGS!!!) :)

A funny turn of events means we'll be heading back to New Hampshire tomorrow (different destination this time) to visit some of J's work colleagues at their place there. Maybe we should move there...they do have that cool "Live Free or Die" motto!

Deck Update

Thank goodness, it's almost over! The railing is up and now the only thing on our check list is the stairs...that's a multiple step process, but still, it's the last step in the long deck-building process.

The *#@%# Deck

Many of you know that we've been in the midst of replacing our deck (which the house inspector told us had been constructed without any regard to building code...they pounded the posts into the ground and crossed their fingers that the frost wouldn't shift it at all). Needless to say, it's been an adventure. Thankfully we've almost completed the project (the decking is on, but we still need stairs and a railing). Here's an amusing photo of J and me using the power auger to dig the holes for the concrete footings. Now, the building code dictates the holes must be 48 inches deep...but the auger only got us to 36 inches before hitting solid ground that it couldn't bore through. Thankfully J and I have muscles of steel (and a great shop vac from the Schillings!) that helped us dig all 5 holes to 48 inches deep.

We've never been so filthy in our lives...the water in the shower was brown from all the dirt. We also had to run our clothes through the wash twice!

I'll attach more photos of the progress later!